STAGE REVIEW : A TRADITIONAL ‘PANTOMIME’

The Found Theatre’s production of “Pantomime� is billed as funny and offbeat, a “truly nontraditional approach to mime.�

Sadly, it is none of the above.

The five-member ensemble, led by director Octavio Ramirez, offers unimaginative let’s-toss-this-one-in routines that often trail off without a definite conclusion, and the mime, for the most part, is performed without crispness or clarity. Enervation, not innovation, is the result.

And while troupe member Cynthia Galles, with lurking humor and a dash of saltiness in her turns as a pixilated drunk and as an eccentric doctor, manages to communicate a sense of fun, elsewhere a self-conscious stretch for poignancy distances actors from audience. Illusion is compromised; movement loses meaning.

One disappointed young viewer summed it up: “I thought there’d be more action .�

Performances continue at 251 East 7th St. in Long Beach through July 7, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m., (213) 433-3363.